Yesterday, we were treated to another preliminary injunction on a product due to patent trolling. Over the past few years, some companies have resorted to patent trolling instead of competing on merit, using frivolous and obvious software and design patents to block competitors - even though this obviously shouldn't be legal. The fact that this is, in fact, legal, is baffling, and up until a few months ago, a regular topic here on OSNews. At some point - I stopped reporting on the matter. The reason for this is simple: I realised that intellectual property law exists outside of regular democratic processes and is, in fact, wholly and utterly totalitarian. What's the point in reporting on something we can't change via legal means?

"The court found that each of the four asserted Apple patents is likely infringed and valid, but only issued an injunction for infringement of the '604 patent. Judge Koh reasoned that unlike the other three patents, the '604 patent covered the highly valued unified search feature of Siri that contributed greatly to consumer demand for the iPhone 4S. Moreover, the court held that Android's infringing "Quick Search Box" feature was touted by Google as a "core user feature on Android" and, therefore, was also a key selling point for the Galaxy Nexus. From there the judge concluded that Apple would suffer irreparable harm in the form of significant lost market share if sales of the competitive Galaxy Nexus..."

I agree that patents over trivial matters should not be the cause of injunctions, but Google themselves states that this particular feature is not "trivial", they tout it as a major feature. And it so happens that Google, as is their want, shamelessly copied Apple regarding that feature.